


Zero to Sixty

by battle_cat



Series: Together [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fanart Welcome, Halting Reunions, Max Comes Back, Max knows a lot about cacti though, Nobody is good at having feelings, Past Rape/Non-con, Porn with Feelings, Smut, The Wives ship Max/Furiosa, learning about sex from War Boys is a terrible idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:02:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4983841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max comes back. Furiosa wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a hundred and eighty-eight days later when Max comes back.

She hears Toast call out for her from the ascending lift and slides out from under the engine of the new rig they’re assembling from salvage and scrap. It’s not the War Rig, the machine she honed until it felt like an extension of her body, but it will be good enough to be getting on with when finished.

“Furi—” Toast breaks off because she can see that Furiosa sees.

He’s wheeling an unfamiliar bike, neither Vuvalini nor Citadel provenance. His beard has grown out and his hair is almost shoulder length, and his clothes are caked with wasteland dust, but not so much that she fails to notice he’s wearing the scarf she gave him.

He looks up and she can see the exact moment that he sees her. She can feel his eyes scan her, not the way some men do it, but checking for injuries, taking in health and strength and the new prosthetic attached to the same leather bindings she’d worn on the road. There’s a brief spasm of some emotion on his face, and she can’t quite read it from this distance but she thinks it might be relief.

“Max.”

He flinches slightly at the sound of his name and she sees his eyes skitter around the room before settling back on her. He licks his lips and swallows.

“Hey.”

His voice is raw, like he hasn’t spoken in a while. He accepts the cup of water Toast hands him.

She does not drop the wrench she’s holding. She places it very carefully on the workbench before crossing to him, until she’s close enough to touch him, if she wanted. His eyes are not so wild and twitchy as the first time she met him, but he can still only meet her gaze in half-glances. He licks water off his bottom lip.

“Mm…brought a…”

He turns to retrieve something from the pack on the back of the bike, and returns cradling a rough bit of cloth filled with dirt that’s barely more than sand. Nestled in the dirt is a broad, flat, oval-shaped green thing the size of a hand—a plant, she thinks, but not like one she’s ever seen before. It’s covered in spikes like needles and at the top of the green lobe is a single, delicate yellow flower.

“Cactus.” The unfamiliar word spurs some long-ago memory. He says something else that sounds like “prickly pair,” and she hasn’t a clue what that means.

“Used to be everywhere. Weeds.” (Another mystery word she’ll have to ask about later.) 

“F’you, mm, plant this bit, it’ll grow. Grows fast. Survivor.” He licks his lips again; why the hell can’t she stop looking at his lips? “Makes a fruit. Sweet, once you take the spikes off. Can eat the green parts, too, and make medicine with ‘em. Good for burns. F’you dry it and make a powder, can use it to clean water. N’if you plant a bunch, like this—” He moves his hand to indicate a row of something close together. “Makes a fence. Can stop a bike, easy. Dead useful.”

She stares at him, his head slightly lowered, the cactus bundle tucked against his jacket, and some part of her registers that this may be the most words she’s ever heard him say at once, and another part wants to smack him, for thinking he can just turn up near two hundred days later with a “Hey” and fucking _cactus_ —

“Is that why you came back, Max? To bring me a cactus?” She’s keeping her voice light, but she’s also aware that she said _me_ and not _us_ and she doesn’t care.

“Mm. Wanted to, um, see how things were.” He looks up at her, and this time he can hold her gaze.

She reaches out carefully to take the cactus bundle from him, and she can see something flick over his face when their hands touch, but she can’t identify it.

“Toast, would you take this up to Dag in the gardens?” She hands the bundle to Toast, whose eyebrows are so far up her forehead they’ve nearly disappeared into her hair.

“Evening meal soon. If you want to wash first, there’s a bath.” She is still keeping her voice carefully even, as if showing up for dinner is a thing he does all the time.

He nods and follows her toward the stairs leading up to the levels above, but at the entrance to the stone passageway she can hear his footsteps scrape to a stop, and when she looks his shoulders are hunched. She has to remind herself that the last time he was in these tunnels he was a prisoner.

“It’s okay. You’re safe here now.” She reaches out to take his hand, and he only flinches a little.

 

The Imperators had a private bath on the level with their quarters, with a door that bolts from the inside. The rooms on this level all have locking doors, in fact, a rarity in the Citadel that she hopes will make Max feel a bit more at ease.

She leaves him at the door to the bath. “My room just is down the hall. The one with the boltcutters.” There’s a twitch of a smile on his face at that.

She goes back to her room and leaves the door open just a little. Cheedo had painted the boltcutter symbol; she would never have thought to mark her own door any special way, and certainly not like that, but the Sisters had pointed out that all the other doors on the hall had pictures describing their purpose or their occupants, clear even to those who could not read.

She is no longer called Imperator, just Furiosa, but she has kept her room, seeing no need for another and plenty of value in a door that locks. It’s simple and spare, no more than she needs: a mattress on the floor, a work table and bench and a few hooks and rock shelves for storage, but it has a window that lets in light and air.

(She spent her childhood sleeping in tents or under the open stars when it was warm enough. It took ages to get used to the rock between her and the night sky, and if she’s honest, it has never really been the same. The window helps, and she has the thought that it might help Max too, before she realizes that that thought meant she was assuming he would sleep in her room tonight; why would she think that; who knows if he wants that; does _she_ want that; oh, but the idea of just sleeping next to him is unexpectedly nice; where is her mind even going with this?)

She sits down and busies herself with taking apart a crossbow that’s been jamming for mysterious reasons to keep that train of thought from going any further.

Except…

Except she remembers lying against his chest in the back of the Gigahorse, thinking about how it would be nice to kiss him, realizing she wanted that and wondering if he wanted it too.

She thought she had had her answer when he hadn’t stayed; she thought she’d made it more than clear that he had a place among them, and he hadn’t taken it, and when he had given her that tiny nod from among the crowd below she thought she should have known all along. 

So she had put away those feelings; concentrated on remembering the times they fought together like they shared the same brain, reading threats and tactics without needing to exchange a word. Told herself he thought of her as a trusted comrade, and that that was already so much more than she had hoped to stumble across in the middle of the Wasteland that she should be grateful, and she was, _she was_. It felt selfish, almost shameful to want more, except…except she also remembered his hands on her face, wiping away blood, and the way it had felt waking up to his arm around her and his steady breathing beneath her, and the way his face had looked so soft and pretty when he slept.

And now he’s back and she can’t stop herself from thinking about those things and _wanting_ , with a sudden fierce intensity that throws her off-balance. She cannot say that she’s been completely immune to desire in her many thousands of days, but the associated vulnerabilities had just never quite seemed worth it. But it’s Max, and nothing works quite the same with him.

He hadn’t come back running with a threat on his heels, she reminds herself, or to warn them of an impending attack. Flimsy horticultural excuses aside, he had come back because he wanted to.

Maybe he wants, too.

 

He spends quite a long time in the bath (she tries very hard not to think of various things he might be doing in there, and fails) and she almost goes to check on him when she hears his slightly uneven footsteps in the hall.

He pushes the door open and she sees that he's used the blades and bit of mirror that are kept in the bath to cut his hair and shave, and oh, he has a very nice face, doesn't he? She's reminded all over again. His haircut is a bit uneven and sticks up in the back. (She could have done it for him; she should have asked; but she has to admit that bit sticking up in the back is kind of adorable.)

He's put on the same grimy clothes over clean skin, jacket included, although it looks like he’s at least made an effort to beat some of the dust out of them. She'll remind him later that they have enough water here that he can wash them.

( _Later_ , she keeps thinking about _later_ , even though he’s said nothing about how long he’s planning to stay.)

He's just standing there in the doorway, as if he's waiting for her to give him a command. As if he’d thought as far as getting to the Citadel but no further.

She finds herself getting to her feet and crossing the room and he stands perfectly still as she rests her forehead gently against his, a proper greeting, and he lets out a soft huff of breath when she puts a hand on the back of his neck. She can’t quite manage _I missed you_ , but she gets out “It’s good to see you,” and his voice is barely a whisper when he says, “You too.”

Out of the corner of her eye she can see his hands twitch, like he wants to touch her, and she wants him to _so badly_ , just put a hand on the back of her neck to mirror her own, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t back away, though, either. The air between them feels electric and it would be so easy to kiss him like this, just a tilt of her head would align their lips, and she has almost worked up the courage to do it when the gong that signals mealtimes rings out, echoing through stone hallways. Max flinches and the moment is broken. She bites her lip.

“Dinner.”

 

Of course Toast has told her Sisters that Max is back, and at dinner they all crowd around the table where she and Max sit, the one in the corner she has picked specifically so his back can be against the wall, because she can see how twitchy and tense this many people and the cacophonous noise in the stone hall make him, although he’s doing his best to hide it.

The Sisters pelt him with questions about where he’s been (he answers with grunts and vaguely directional hand motions) and stories about how the Citadel has changed; how they survived the siege that came when the remnants of Joe’s army made it back through the pass and struck deals with the new leaders of the Bullet Farm and Gastown; how the Mothers who survived have already suggested ways to increase the crop yield and get more use out of the same amount of water. 

They ply Max with second helpings from their own rations, and someone always refills his water cup, which he still drinks from like he won’t get more when it runs out. The food is not yet so plentiful that they can dish it out freely, especially since they’ve evened out the rations so that everyone gets the same, including the people below, but there is enough water to drink as much as you want with a meal.

Dag is sitting sideways at the end of the bench because her belly is now too big to fit under the table, leaning against Cheedo, who is no longer fragile-looking at all but strong and brown. Once Toast shoves in on their side of the crowded bench, there’s no way for Furiosa to avoid sitting right next to Max, the entire length of her thigh pressed up against his, their elbows brushing once in a while.

She’s finished eating and her hand is resting on her knee while Capable tells a long story involving trade negotiations and an amusing misunderstanding of Gastown hospitality rituals. She’s heard this one before (several times) and is not really paying attention to anything when she feels Max brush his fingers against hers under the table, the very lightest of touches. She is quite sure that no one but him registers the tiny hitch in her breath as he runs his thumb over the back of her palm.

She wants to let him know this is okay and see what he’ll do if she encourages him, so she flips her hand over, palm up, and briefly catches one of his fingers between hers, and there’s a miniscule twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Furiosa has completely lost the thread of Capable’s story and where she’s supposed to laugh at things. Max, however, seems quite skilled at pretending to pay attention while he plays with her hand under the table. He’s not even holding it, just touching, tracing the lines on her palm and trailing his fingers along the length of hers and it’s all she can goddamn think about. It’s just her _hand_ ; it shouldn’t go through her like a splash of nitro, but holy V8, if his touch on her hand is doing _this_ , she can’t help thinking what—

“Furiosa?”

She realizes Capable must have asked her a question, but she has no idea what it was.

“You weren’t paying attention, were you?”

“Sorry.” She mumbles something about a long day in the garage and showing Max to the guest quarters and she’s sure that no one is remotely fooled as she and Max get up from the table at the exact same moment.

 

There are indeed guest quarters at the Citadel, but she leads him back to hers, and if he has thoughts on this he doesn’t voice them.

She sees him exhale a sigh of relief once they’re back in the cool quiet of her room, some of the tension dropping out of his shoulders.

“Better?”

“Mm.”

She turns to close the door and put the bolt over it, and she vows not to hesitate this time, because she can feel him standing _right_ behind her. She only has to spin around on her heel to be close enough to grab a handful of his jacket and kiss him.

He makes a small noise of pleasure as he kisses her back and _oh_ , that sends a thrill through her. His hands come up to cup her face as if he’s just been waiting for her cue, and his lips are just as soft as she imagined.

She pulls him closer and his hands slide to the back of her neck and the space between her shoulderblades as he kisses her deeper, and she can hear the sighs and little noises she’s making, and they’re as surprising to her as anyone.

His fingers are digging at the muscles in her back, like he can’t get enough of touching her, and she _loves_ it, every little spasm creating a hot ripple of desire. It’s exhilarating, both wanting and being wanted. She’s never had them line up before and she wants more, she wants all of it.

She pulls away just enough to start undoing the straps of her prosthetic. She can do it easily without looking, but he leans in, careful and slow, and mouths at the spot just under the hinge of her jaw, and he’s so goddamn _distracting_ that it takes her twice as long as usual to get everything off. She’s sure any other man in the Wasteland would be laid out with a punch to the throat by now, leaning into her space like that, but she’s also sure that if anything he did made her flinch even the slightest bit he would read it in a second.

She finally frees herself from the prosthetic and the leather underneath that spreads the weight from the straps, and he’s shucking off his jacket so that when she pulls them back together it’s just two thin pieces of cloth between them as she finds his mouth again, hungrily, as his arms come back around her and she runs her fingers through his hair.

He backs her up against the wall and she thinks she should feel trapped like this, but she likes it, likes the feeling of being pressed between the wall and his body as he kisses and nips at her throat, her shoulder, the hollow between her collarbones. His hand is on her waist and she puts hers over it, and she can tell from his twitch he thinks she wants him to remove it, but she slides it under her shirt because she wants to feel his hands on her skin, and she shivers when his fingers brush the scar on her side, the one he gave her.

She can feel him getting hard and she realizes that she likes that too; she thinks she should be scared but there’s a crackle of desire instead when his erection brushes against her leg; she likes the thought that she is doing this to him, so she hooks her fingers into his belt and pulls his pelvis against hers, and she loves the helpless little grunt he makes when she rolls her hips against him, and she wants more.

She shifts so one of his legs is between hers so she can grind against his thigh, and once she gets a rhythm going it feels so good, all she wants is to pull him closer; her half-arm is hooked around his waist and her fingers tangled in his hair, his nails are digging into her back under her shirt, and then he slips a hand between her legs and gets his thumb in a spot that makes her gasp. “Mm?” he checks, and she gets out a breathless “Yes,” because having the hard nub of his thumb to grind against is even better, and he does this thing where he rolls his thumb around that makes her moan “Ahh, Max,” and she can feel him smile against her neck when she says his name.

He’s moving his hand against her, just slightly, adding a rhythm to the rock of her hips, and she’s found this spot before with her own hand but it was somehow never quite like _this_ ; it’s entirely different when it’s someone else doing it, when it’s _Max_ doing it. She can feel the wave of pleasure building inside her, and she’s grateful for the wall and his arm around her, because her legs are shaking now; she’s getting close to the edge and then he shifts the motion just slightly and gets it _exactly_ right, and she comes with a gasp and a dig of fingernails into the back of his neck.

Afterward she’s just hanging onto him, dazed, and he keeps nudging her with his thumb and surprising her with little aftershocks, until she has to push his hand away so she can catch her breath, and all she wants is to pull him as close to her as she can.

He’s still hard against her; she can feel it through both their pants, and after a moment he shifts and moves to pull away from her. “Mm…I have to—” He makes a motion to indicate putting his hand down his pants, and he actually _blushes_ , and it’s so endearing she doesn’t want him to leave her side. She still has her half-arm around his waist and she tugs him firmly against her, and he asks the question with a raised eyebrow and she smiles and nods.

He keeps his eyes on her as he puts a hand down his pants and begins stroking himself, and she likes watching him, enjoying the thought that she’s made him so hard he had to touch himself, but then it gets too intense for him and he buries his face against her shoulder, his breath rough and damp against her skin. His hand is on the back of her neck, the exact touch she wanted earlier, and she wants to help him along like he did for her, but she's not exactly sure how and he seems to be doing fine on his own, so she settles for kissing his neck. 

He makes a sound when her teeth scrape his skin, so she gives him a soft little bite, and he whimpers, and she likes that, so she does it again, harder, planting her teeth in the muscle where his neck meets his shoulder and slowly increasing the pressure, and that’s what sends him over the edge. He’s so quiet, but she can feel him twitching and gasping against her, and there’s something so vulnerable about it that it does strange things to her heart.

He needs some recovery time after, like her, and he rests his forehead against hers, sweaty and breathing hard, his hand rubbing the soft fuzz on the back of her head. He looks as stunned as she feels, and they hadn’t even taken their clothes off. When he opens his eyes the look in them is a mix of dazed and happy and shocked and like he can’t believe his goddamn luck, and she knows exactly how he feels.

She is feeling drowsy and sated now, and she wants nothing more than to lie down with him next to her.

“Sleep here?” she asks. She wants to make sure he knows it’s a request, not a command.

“I, uh….” He swallows, his gaze flicking away. “Have nightmares.”

She knows. She’s seen him wake up from them.

“Me too.” A deep breath. “Weapons out of grabbing reach, then?”

He has to actually think about it. She has no idea how long it’s been since he’s slept without a gun or a blade within arm’s reach. It’s not exactly easy for her either—instinct dies hard even behind a bolted door. After a moment, he nods.

He puts his sidearm and two knives on the ledge above the bed, too high to reach in a half-conscious lunge, and she extracts the shotgun from under the mattress, and the knife from under the other side of the mattress.

She ducks behind the curtain at the back of the room to change into the loose top and shorts she’s used to sleeping in. (Another relic of Imperator days, the luxury of having a separate set of clothes to do nothing but sleep in.) Max seems perfectly content to take off his boots and leg brace and lie down fully clothed. He makes a surprised noise of enjoyment when he stretches out on her bed. She gives him a questioning eyebrow raise.

“Your bed’s soft,” he mutters, looking up at her.

She slides in next to him, curling up with her back against him and his breath soft and even against the back of her neck.

“Should spend more time in it, then.” She finds she has the guts to say it when she’s not looking him in the eye.

She can feel him laugh softly and press a brief kiss just below her hairline. He puts one hand lightly on her side and she pulls his arm around her and that’s the way she falls asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I tagged this "Porn with Feelings" I apparently meant "Porn with FEEEEEEELINGS." This chapter is mostly angst and only a little smut, but I promise, the smut will be making an aggressive comeback in Chapter 3.
> 
> Also, Max has, maybe not really a panic attack, but a medium-sized Max freakout over people being kind and trusting to him.

Max wakes up to sunlight on his face. For a moment he’s frozen, not remembering where he is and completely disoriented by warmth and softness and light. It takes him a moment to realize it’s _daylight_ , and that means he has slept though the night, _the entire night_ , without a nightmare.

He can’t remember the last time that happened.

He processes rock wall and soft bedding and warm blanket and remembers that he is at the Citadel. Sleeping in Furiosa’s bed.

He has hunched up against the wall in his sleep, curled into a ball with the habits of someone used to sleeping huddled in cars or on cold sand. He rolls over carefully and there she is, sleeping right next to him, her face peaceful and soft, relaxed and at ease and so, so beautiful in the morning light, and it’s like looking over the edge of a cliff.

He hadn’t meant for this to happen. Had barely meant to come back at all. As the Citadel lift had started to rise, surrounded by cheering Wretched, his instinct had said _run_ and so he had, with no vehicle and no supplies other than the canteen he’d filled from the waterfall. He’d made sure she saw him go and hoped she understood it wasn’t personal, and spent a hundred and eighty-eight days trying not to think of her.

But then he’d come back and she’d accepted him so readily, as if this had been the plan all along, and she had sought out his kisses and his touch like she’d been hungry for them, and he had been hungry too, although he hadn’t realized quite how desperately so until they were in the middle of it, and then he’d let her pull him into her bed as if she _wanted_ him there, and he had gone as if he could ever be any of the things she expected or deserved.

What the hell was he doing?

 

She pulls him aside after breakfast, and she has this smile on her face; she looks so _happy_. It makes the pit of his stomach ache.

“I want to show you something.”

She takes him down to the garages, to a secluded bay cut into the rock, and there’s something large and misshapen under a heavy tarp, and he feels his heart constrict because he knows what it is even before she pulls the tarp off and reveals the twisted wreck of what’s left of the Interceptor.

It’s a mess, blackened and smashed, the interior charred and the monster supercharger that the war boys added completely mangled. But the bent hood is propped open and he can see, although he almost can’t believe it—

“The engine block’s intact,” she says, even as he’s thinking it. She says it softly, as if it’s a living thing that had miraculously survived the crash. “Which is why I even thought it was worth it to—”

“You—” His throat feels unexpectedly tight. “You didn’t strip it for parts.”

“Oh, the blackthumbs wanted to, all right. I bargained with them to wait two hundred days. Told them if you came back, you’d be the best mechanic for it.” She looks over at him, and he has no idea what expression his face is making, but she gives him a gentle smile. “You just made it.”

She trails her hand over a twisted doorframe. “You’d have to cut it apart and put it back together, but I think you could hand-beat some of the body back into shape. The rest you could melt down and replace.”

He’d assumed it was a lost cause, that even if he’d found the wreck he’d never be able to move it, let alone start it. And there’d be parts to be replaced and nowhere to get them. But he’d never had access to metal fabrication before. They could even _make_ parts, if they had the right scrap.

“The blower’s fucked and the mounts are damaged,” she said at the exact same time he was noting that in his head. “Not sure what you’d do about that. It would be a lot of work, but I think you could make it—well, it wouldn’t be the same, exactly, but…it’d still be something worth driving.”

She looks at him again, and he still can’t tell what face he’s making; he feels like he’s forgotten even how to fake emotions, but her expression is slightly sad. “I thought…you could work on it while I worked on the new rig. Or…if you wanted…we could work on both together.”

He doesn’t know what to do or what to say or what to feel; his head is buzzing with a soup of vague anxiety and other things he can’t parse out. This all seems weird and wrong, like it has to be a trick or a trap or a dream he’s about to come crashing awake from. Nobody salvages things and keeps them safe for him. They only take.

He realizes he’s been looking at the floor and when he flicks his gaze to her, her face is so full of kind concern that he can’t bear it and he has to look away again. He just nods a few times and hopes that she’ll understand all the things he can’t say.

“I have rounds to make, but I’ll be back later. Ask Spanner, the one with the eye patch, if you can’t find anything.” A brief touch of her hand on his, and then she’s gone.

Because he needs something to do to control the rising buzz of fear and confusion in his head, he forces himself to take a look at the car.

It’s not, actually, as hopeless as he might have thought for something that had been crushed between two tanker trucks. There’s soot in everything from the fire, and sand, too, but the engine does, unbelievably, seem salvageable. He thinks Furiosa was being overly optimistic about the body—once he gets underneath he can see the front axle is bent—but there is enough that you could build _something_.

He can at least start cleaning everything off. Someone will use the parts, even if it’s not him.

He manages to find Spanner, one-eyed and mottled with shiny burn scars, and procures a rag and a small hand-pumped bellows to start blowing out the dirt and sand.

Having a task to do usually helps him, and as he works on the car (the wreck, he tells himself, not worth it to get any hopes up about it being a car again) he can slowly feel the twitchy tension in his body start to unwind. When Furiosa stops by with a brick of mealworm paste and some kind of flat, gritty biscuit for lunch, he’s able to have a normal conversation about what they might do about the wiring in the dash, a large portion of which is melted.

Lying on his back under the burnt chassis as the afternoon heat bakes into the Citadel, he has actually started to lose track of time when he catches the sound of his name. He stills under the car and listens.

It’s Toast, talking with the burly half-life everyone calls Ace, Furiosa’s second-in-command on the War Rig crew. He’d heard the story last night of how the man had survived the sandstorm and limped back to the Citadel, nose broken and ribs bruised, how he’d had some choice words for Furiosa when she came back but then proved indispensable when the siege was upon them.

They’re just around the corner from Max and he can hear them quite clearly.

“Just saying,” Ace is grumbling, “weren’t him preparing the defenses when she was too weak to get outta bed, changin’ her bandages when she was burning up with fever.”

Toast snorts. “You sound jealous.”

“Just lookin’ out for her, is all. What do we even know about him?”

“We know what we need to know. He helped us. He saved her life.”

“Yeah. And then he left her, barely standin’ upright.”

He’s moving before he realizes it, sliding out from under the car and striding through the garage, hardly looking where he’s going. Out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees Toast see him, but he doesn’t care. He’ll be gone as soon as he can fire up his bike.

What had he been playing at, he thinks bitterly, working on his car and listening to stories and letting himself sleep in her _bed_ like…like this was some kind of home? Making them think he was a person who stayed places, who could be counted on?

It wasn’t Ace’s suspicion that had sunk like a knife into his belly—that seemed perfectly rational. It was Toast’s trust, the absolute certainty with which she’d vouched for him. Toast, the least trusting of all the Sisters. Toast, who’d stared him down when he put a gun in her face (he squirms to think of it now).

He needs to leave, now, before they spend any more time thinking he is someone he is not. Because he knows what will happen. They will come to trust him, and then at some point he will fail them. He can see their faces— _her face_ —now, full of terror and confusion and so much disappointment, and he cannot bear it.

He gets all the way to his bike before he realizes his jacket is in Furiosa’s room. He can scavenge food and steal fuel, but the compass and map and tools secreted in its pockets are precious; he can’t leave without them.

So he’s stumbling through the passages, the goddamn warren of tunnels that he can’t keep straight, getting lost and doubling back, fear rising to panic shot through with memories of running from whooping war boys, and Glory is at his heels calling out, “Max, stop running,” and then she’s right in front of him saying it again, but he walks right through her, because fuck her, he doesn’t have to listen to a ghost.

He’s not sure what he’ll do if he gets to Furiosa’s room and she’s in it, but when he opens the door it’s blessedly empty. He grabs his jacket off the hook on the wall, and on the way down he only gets lost once.

But then Furiosa is there by his bike when he comes back down, saying “Max, wait—Max, why—” as he wheels toward the lift, and he wishes she would stop saying his name; he should never have told it to her; only dead people know his name—

 

Toast had gone running for Furiosa as soon as she realized what had happened, and thankfully she’d only been on the other side of the garage. She’s fast enough to meet Max as he comes down the stairs, his face closed and hard; it sends her heart into her throat to see the look on his face, and she realizes all at once that she cannot stand to see him leave now, not after they’d just—

He’s wheeling his bike toward the lift, no supplies and not even a check of the fuel tank, and maybe it’s desperation that makes her call out the thing she is thinking, in her voice that can stop an entire Rig crew of war boys in their tracks: “Max, stop running!”

He freezes, his hand clenched on the handle of the bike. His head drops.

She approaches very slowly, like now that she’s gotten him to stop she doesn’t want to spook him. “Max,” she says softly, trying to find the words that will make him stay; why can she never make him stay? She decides to try the practical. “It’s late. Stupid to leave this late in the day, right? Stay the night. If you still want to leave in the morning, we’ll make sure you have fuel and supplies.”

She can see him exhale a long breath, then another—trying to calm himself down, she realizes, much the same way she does it. Finally he nods.

 

She takes him up to one of the sniper posts, the quiet high ledges where their gaze can stretch far out to the horizon. The sun is low and the desert is burnt orange, the color of rust.

Eves, one of the Mothers, is on sniper duty, and she’s quite happy to hand the rifle over to Furiosa and take a break inside the shade of the Citadel. The snipers are more a precaution than anything; most enemies have learned to stay away from the Citadel since it’s acquired its new cadre of frighteningly skilled sharpshooters.

She props the rifle against the rock by her side and sits next to Max, watching the sun set, until his hands stop shaking.

She tries to communicate with her body language and her easy breathing that she doesn’t need him to say anything, but after a while he mutters, “Shouldn’t have left you.”

“It’s okay.”

“You were hurt.”

“I lived.”

“Could’ve helped…during the siege.”

“We live in a natural fortress. It’s built for sieges.”

“Should’ve gone back to the canyon. Looked for survivors. Maybe could’ve—”

“Max. You don’t owe us anything.”

He licks his lips, still looking at his hands. “Not good at…staying places.”

She chooses her words carefully; she doesn’t want him to feel trapped, but she also doesn’t want him to think it doesn’t matter to her. “If you need to go, I would never force you to stay.” It hurts to say it, but she thinks if he feels caged he’ll just bolt. “But,” she adds quietly, “I like it when you’re with me. I think…I’m better around you.”

She sneaks a glance at him, but he’s still staring intently at his hands, worrying the edge of his jacket.

“Do you know…last night…I didn’t have any nightmares,” she says. “It was the first time in…a long time.”

“Mm.” 

She’s not sure what it means this time.

He’s silent for another long stretch. The sun is almost touching the horizon when he mutters, “Not leaving tomorrow. Dunno when. But…not tomorrow.”

The wave of relief is so intense it scares her a little, but she is able to keep her voice calm and even when she says, “I’m glad.”

 

That night they lie side by side in her bed, just kissing and kissing, slow and heady and unquenchable.

Furiosa is lying on her side with one leg hooked over his, and Max can feel how amazingly responsive she is to every touch, how just his hands on her back and side and his mouth on her throat are making her sigh and squirm.

He puts a careful hand on her breast, outside her clothes, teasing her nipple to a hard peak under the thin fabric of her sleep top, and she moans appreciatively. Her hips are rocking of their own volition, and eventually she slips her hand into her shorts.

“Can I?”

“God, yes,” he gets out between kisses, and he leans back a little so he can watch her touch herself.

She’s not delicate with herself; she likes firm, steady pressure on her clit, and he tries to pay attention to her hand for future reference but then he gets too caught up in just watching her, her face flushed, eyes closed and head tipped back, mouth half-open as little breathy sounds escape her. When she comes she arches, her long neck exposed before him, and it’s incredible to watch.

Afterward she snuggles sleepily against him, as if he’d done it for her. “You?” she asks.

“M’okay.” He’ll get himself off after she falls asleep. As much as he likes watching her, and she seems perfectly comfortable with him doing so, he’s still not used to anyone watching him. It’s been a solitary activity for a long time now.

She pulls the blanket over them both and curls up next to him as he lies on his back, his arm around her and her quiet breathing steadying him.

He still doesn’t quite understand what on earth he’s done to deserve her trust and her desire, her fierce eyes and soft smile and the arch of her back as she moans with pleasure in his arms. And he’s still not convinced it won’t all be taken away from him the second he relaxes. But the least he can do, for her sake, is try not to panic and run. For as long as he can, anyway.

He makes short work of his own orgasm with images of hers fresh in his mind, and drifts off to sleep with his face nestled against her hair.

When he jolts awake a few hours later, clawing his way out of blood and screams and accusing faces, he can’t help thinking, _Back to normal._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just doing my part to ensure Furiosa remains the most eaten-out character in fandom history.
> 
> I've pretty much reversed the smut-to-angst ratio of the previous chapter, so enjoy.
> 
> Also, YoukaiYume drew [some beautiful (and very NSFW) art](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/145406295518/filthy-smut-warning-based-off-of-a-smut) to go with this chapter.

She wakes up when she hears Max jolt out of his nightmare next to her, a frantic rustle of blankets and the gasp of a held-back scream. He has taught himself to wake quietly, like she has, but she’s a light sleeper for the exact same reasons he is.

“Max.”

In the dark room she can just make out the faint outline of him sitting upright, hunched over, breath heaving.

She reaches out, carefully, to touch his arm. He flinches badly before he can stop himself.

“It’s okay.”

“Sorry,” he huffs out. He runs a hand over his face.

She slides out of bed. “Come.”

 

The grass in the garden atop the Citadel is soft and cool and very strange beneath his bare feet. Furiosa has the blanket from the bed, plus the extra one from the storage ledge. She walks slowly for him, letting him keep an arm around her; he can walk without the brace, but not fast or far. The moon is three-quarters full and bright enough to not trip over a growing thing as she leads him deep into the garden, to a secluded spot where they can lie on their backs between the blankets and look up at the stars.

 

“I come up here at night when I can’t sleep sometimes,” Furiosa says. “Always feels better when I can see the sky.”

There is always something calming about the night breeze and the rustle of plants and the thousands of stars above her. Tonight there is the extra calming thing of being able to rest her head on Max’s shoulder. She feels him exhale a deep breath of cool night air and hopes it is calming for him too.

“When I was a child,” she says after a long moment of silence, “we slept in tents. When it was hot, we’d all sleep outside under the stars and the Mothers would tell stories. When it was cold, I’d crawl under the blankets with my mother, or my aunts, or Val.”

She can hear her voice crack on the last word. She thinks it’s too dark for him to see the tear that runs down her temple, but then she feels his fingers brush it away.

She leans into his touch, letting his hand cup her face, pressing a soft kiss at the base of his palm where the lines run together, and then turns, moving the kiss to his lips, letting him pull her against him.

It starts out soft and slow, but when his lips trail down her neck she feels desire uncurl again, as if the kissing and touching earlier that night hadn’t done anything at all to slake it. He’s feeling it too, she can tell, as she slides her leg between his and rubs and gets a soft moan out of him. She doesn’t know if it’s the adrenaline from the dream or the crisp night air or the novelty of being outside in the garden among endless stars and the smell of green things, but he’s hard when she rolls onto her back and pulls him on top of her.

His mouth and hands are exploring her, his lips on her breastbone, fingers sliding under her top to knead at the hard muscle of her stomach, and her thin sleep shirt between them suddenly seems like a terrible imposition. She tugs it off one-handed with practiced ease, the cool night air a delicious shock on bare skin, and moans as his hot mouth finds the underside of her breast.

He’s teasing her, running his tongue in lazy circles around her nipple, winding her up with deliberate slowness until she whimpers and squirms. Gods, it’s so different being touched when you want it, so unbelievably good. Even touching herself had been better with him there, but she wants more than that now, and she tries to tell him with an impatient grind of her hips. He laughs and runs the tips of his fingers just under the line of her shorts.

“Can I put my mouth on you?”

She’d seen war boys suck on each other plenty; they didn’t much care who watched them and they always seemed to enjoy it. She isn’t quite sure how it would work with her own body, but she wants to try it. So she slides her shorts down over her hips and tosses them aside, and revels in the thrill of being completely naked in front of him, and the awestruck look on his face.

But then he scoots down and the feeling of his bulk between her spread legs sends a sudden, icy wave of fear through her, old fear but powerful, and she can feel everything in her lower body clench.

He sees it too, and stops. “Okay?” He puts a careful hand on her knee and her leg muscles seize up. He removes it immediately, and she actually growls in frustration, because the itch of desire hasn’t gone away but she is quite sure she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from fighting him if he tried to touch her right now.

“Hey.” He reaches out carefully and finds her hand, and she squeezes hard.

“Don’t move,” she hisses, because she doesn’t have the words to explain right now, but she’ll be damned if she’s about to let _him_ ruin _this_.

She lies still, taking deep breaths, willing muscles to unclench and her heart to stop racing. She’s squeezing Max’s hand hard enough that she must be hurting him, but he doesn’t make a sound and stays perfectly still, propped up on his elbows between her legs, as she wrestles the fear back down where it belongs, in the past. Finally she feels calm enough to give his hand a little tug and murmur, “Now.”

He doesn’t hesitate when she says go, and she’s so thankful for that. He slides up and sucks a hard, wet kiss on the inside of her thigh, and she feels everything spark back up again, the relief of a stalled engine finally turning over, and she’s thankful for that too.

She gasps at the first long lick of his tongue through her folds, at the way it ends with a flick at that most sensitive spot, the place she touches to make herself come. He does it again and this time his tongue stays in that spot, sliding around and finding the most sensitive places, the motions that make her whimper and twitch, pulsing against her with hard, insistent licks, and it’s so intense and so, so good, better than anything she could do with her own hand, and she’s squirming and whining “fuck, god, yes, oh, fuck, Max,” and he makes his little _hmfph_ of a laugh and that sends delicious vibrations skittering through her.

He keeps curling his tongue into her, pulling out the growing wetness, and then he hits a spot that sends a jolt through her legs and she gasps, “There,” and he keeps his tongue _right there_ , licking until her legs are shaking helplessly, and she comes so hard she has to bite down on her hand to muffle a scream.

He gives her soft, gentle licks as she shudders with aftershocks, until she’s too sensitive and has to beg for mercy with a foot on his shoulder, and then he plants idle wet kisses up and down the inside of her thighs, until she finally gives a gentle tug on his hair to get him to slide back up and kiss her on the mouth. He tastes like her.

They rest for a minute, his head on her shoulder as she catches her breath, feeling dizzy and loose and buzzing with pleasure all over. When she shivers he pulls the blanket back over them both.

“Holy fuck, Max,” she breathes when she feels like she can speak again. He can’t hide his smile.

She’s trailing idle an idle hand through his hair and over his back, absorbing the heat of him even though he still has all his clothes on, and she can feel that he’s still quite hard against her hip.

“Can I do something for you?” She slips her hand between them and gives him a long, slow drag of her palm against his cock through his pants, feels his breath catch. “I want to…if you want me to.” He’s set a very high bar, but she’s not without ambition.

He unbuttons his pants and slides them down for her, guides her hand as she curls it around his dick, makes a little _mmf_ sound as she gives it an experimental stroke. She thinks it’s funny, how men get so on about these things when they’re really quite sensitive and vulnerable pieces of equipment.

 

Max hasn’t let anyone else touch him since—in ages. Far too vulnerable. But under the blanket with her mix of soft breasts and hard muscle pressed against him, her warm eyes and dizzying smile, he thinks it will be okay.

She starts out slow, a little hesitant, and he helps guide her hand to a rhythm and pressure that feels good. “Like that?” she murmurs. He gives an affirmative grunt; he likes it when she talks to him.

She’s giving him ticklish little kisses on his face and neck as she gradually speeds up and his breath gets faster and rougher, and then she gives him a sharp nip on his ear and he twitches.

“You like that, don’t you?” she breathes in his ear, and there’s just a hint of imperiousness in her soft voice, and _oh shit_ , that is hot. He gives an answering whimper before he can stop himself, and he can _hear_ the devilish smile in her voice when she says, “Will you come for me if I do it again?” And before he can react to _that_ , she latches her teeth onto his earlobe and strokes fast and hard, and he’s spilling onto her stomach with a shocked little moan.

She still has that smile on her face when he looks up (she has fucking _dimples_ ; why did he never notice that before?) and an undeniable expression of _triumph_. Once she works up the confidence to talk dirty and tease, she’s going to be a nightmare, he thinks. A very, very sexy nightmare.

 

After she makes Max come, he scoots down under the blanket and licks his seed off her skin, not trying to rev her up again, just tender and slow. She lets him lick her hand off, too, and help her pull her clothes back on, and then snuggles up with her back against his chest and the blanket pulled tightly around them.

She’s starting to fall asleep when he says, “What happened at the beginning there?”

Ugh, she doesn’t want to talk about that; she wants to fall asleep with his arms around her and his warm breath brushing her neck just above the brand. But he’s been so good to her, and she knows he’s asking so he’ll know what to do, and what not to do. She wants to tell him that sometimes there’s nothing he can do; she needs to push through the fear on her own, but she doesn’t know how to say that to him. But she thinks she owes it to him to at least try.

“Got scared,” she starts. Then, after a minute, “Bad memory.”

“And…once we got going?”

“Hmm. _Not_ what I was thinking about.”

“Good.” A pause. “Don’t want to…do anything when you’re not there.”

“I know,” she says. “I can say stop.”

“Good.”

She tugs the blanket a little tighter around them, searching for the words to say the thing she wants to say.

“Sometimes…I might not want to stop, but I just…need a minute. To get back in control.”

“Mm. Yeah. Okay.” The way he says it makes her think he might understand the idea, if not for the same reasons as her. And although she is very sleepy, that is another thing she takes a moment to be silently, impossibly grateful for.


	4. Chapter 4

Furiosa can feel early morning light on her face when she hears a hastily muffled giggle.

Max’s steady breathing is warm against the back of her neck. She keeps her eyes closed and her face relaxed. She’s able to tell by the brush of footsteps in the grass that it’s all four of them. Of course.

“Toldya,” Toast says.

“They could have been together on the first night.” That’s Capable.

“Uh-uh.” Toast again. “The bet was how long it would take us to catch them. And you all owe me some jerky.”

As their footsteps move away she hears Cheedo grumble, “Don’t even like stupid lizard jerky,” and Dag, airily: “I think we should split it, since I was right on the location.”

 

After breakfast Max goes back to working on the car, seeming content to have a task to bury himself in. Furiosa normally spends her mornings dealing with trades or repairs or surveying the defenses, but today she has a different mission.

She finds Janey in the gardens, counting seeds and doing math with a bit of chalk on the stone bench between her legs. Estimating crop yields, trying to figure if there is a way to produce more without planting down at the base of the Citadel, which the Mothers want to do but Furiosa thinks would be a nightmare to defend.

(A cactus fence outside of catapulting range might help, though, she can’t help thinking.)

She sits on the opposite end of the bench. “I need…some advice,” she begins, more quietly than she normally speaks.

“What is it, child?” Janey always calls her that, and she doesn’t mind even though she is past twelve thousand days now.

“I would like to have sex with Max.” 

Furiosa can feel her cheeks flush, goddammit, and focuses on picking at a groove in the stone bench.

“All right, then.” This can’t be the type of advice Janey was expecting to give, but her voice is even.

“I mean…we’ve done…other things.”

“Have you now.” Janey’s room is quite high up in the Citadel, with a window, and it’s not impossible that she heard them last night.

“But…I would like him to fuck me.”

She had thought about it last night under the stars, and been surprised to want it. But then, she’d been surprised every step of the way with him, by the force and daring of her own desire in his presence. He had this way of being so attentive and careful without making her feel fragile, of being unafraid to match the intensity of her wanting with his own, even when they had to step together over her broken parts. She wouldn’t have known how much she needed that—wouldn’t have even been able to describe it—but she did.

She probably would have let him fuck her last night in the garden, if he had asked, and maybe even liked it. But it’s better this way, she thinks, better to have a battle plan in advance. So she plunges on.

“I know…it doesn’t have to hurt, but…I’ve never done it—” ( _when I wasn’t being held down_ , she thinks) “—when I wanted to. I don’t know anything about…how to make it nice.”

“Ah.” There’s no pity in the older woman’s expression, for which Furiosa is very grateful, even if she still needs to spend some time examining every detail of this bench.

“Well, firs’ things first. You don’t need to do nothing you don’t want to.”

“I know. I want to.”

“And if you start out wantin’ to, and then partway through you decide you don’t, you can stop. You don’t owe him nothing.’”

“I understand that part.”

“Right, then. Do you know how to give yourself an orgasm?”

“I—yes.” She had to dig back into her brain for the word, but she knew what it meant.

“With your hand?”

“Yes. And, uh…sometimes with a machine.” She’d figured that one out on the back of a bike in scout training and nearly fallen off.

“Oh yeah, old standard.” Janey chuckles. “And Max, he knows how to spark your ignition?”

“He’s, uh, quite good at it.” That gets a full-on cackle of laughter, and why had she never noticed just how many colors of red were in this stone bench?

“Good for him.” Janey is brushing the rows of chalk figures off the bench with her sleeve. “Now. If it hurts, might mean that you’ve got tension in those muscles. You got a routine for calming yourself down when you’re anxious?”

Furiosa nods. She’d had to learn that long ago, for fighting.

“Or it could be that you just ain’t wet enough yet. No need to rush it. Have him give you a few orgasms first, before he sticks it in. Or do it yourself, whatever pleases.”

“Uh…a few?” And _that’s_ what gets the look of pity.

“Oh, child…you’ve been missing out.”

Soon Janey is drawing diagrams on the stone bench in between them, writing out words like _labia_ and _clitoris_ , unfamiliar or barely remembered. (A side effect of so much time spent among War Boys, Furiosa thinks: she can rattle off twenty slang terms for penis, fourteen of them car-related, but doesn’t know the names of her own parts.) Janey goes through the schematics in substantial detail, and also suggests some things Max might enjoy, if he wants them.

At some point Dag drifts past, a tray full of green shoots balanced against her full belly. She pauses to tilt her head at the drawings for a long minute, then moves on with a secret little smile on her face.

 

Later she finds Max in the garage, elbow deep in grease and dirt under the warped hood of the Interceptor. He’s got enough disconnected that together they can heave the engine up and out onto the blocks he’s set up, so he can start cleaning and repairing what can be salvaged and figuring out how to replace what can’t be.

She can’t help watching him at work, a little sweaty and with a smear of grease across his forehead, and _unf_ , it makes her want. She thinks she would let him fuck her right now against the wall of the repair bay if there weren’t so many people around.

 

He doesn’t object in the least when she pins him against the rock wall with her metal hand. His own hands are dirty but she doesn’t seem to care, and they’re on her back and on the curve of her ass as she presses her whole body against him for a bout of heated, sweaty kissing in the shadows where no one can see them.

“Max,” she says when they both have to come up for air, “when we go to bed tonight, I want you inside me.”

“You sure?” He can’t say that he doesn’t want it, but— “We don’t have to rush.”

“I want to. And I think you want it, too?” She twitches her hips against him, and the answer is not really in doubt. “So let’s try.”

She’s watching her own finger trace a line along the edge of his belt, not looking him in the eye. “You’ll, uh, have to get me very wet first,” she says, and it just _undoes_ him, how she can be shy and commanding at the same time. “Think you can handle it?”

He slides his hand between her legs, gives her a second to register its presence there, and then presses his thumb against her in a firm, slow drag forward that ends at her clit. He’s rewarded with her stuttering intake of breath.

“I’ll manage.”

 

That night they remove clothes in a dizzy blur, relishing skin against skin, hands and mouths everywhere. She keeps the lamp lit so they can see each other. He has a tattoo from the blood shed on his back (she sees but doesn’t linger on it) and just as many scars as she does.

He slides two fingers into her mouth and watches her suck them wet, that light in his eyes like they’re planning an attack together, and then runs his hand down through the rough hair between her legs to tease and flick and rub. It’s not as overwhelming as having his mouth on her last night, but it’s worth it to have his lips on her neck and her breasts and the line of her jaw instead.

He makes her come like that, and she can feel how slick and wet she is when he trails a finger along her sex, not inside, just touching. She bucks her hips and he takes the hint with a smile and slips one finger inside her, stroking her from the inside, with his thumb still moving on the outside, and it’s a new and different feeling but she likes it, and she can feel everything revving up again. He waits until she’s just on the edge and then slides down and sucks at her clit, and she comes again, her hand digging into the sheets and all kinds of sounds coming out of her. She doesn’t care who hears.

His fingers are at her mouth again, giving her a taste of her own salty-sweet satisfaction, and with his tousled hair and wet, kiss-reddened lips and the sheen of sweat on the muscles in his shoulders, she just wants more, and she’s nudging him to kneel between her legs.

“Mm…would you rather…get on top?” he says between kisses, and…that’s an intriguing idea, but it seems like way too many muscles groups to think about controlling. 

She shakes her head. “Like this,” she says. “Just…slow.”

He has an arm under her back, holding his weight off her as he slides in very slowly, and the feeling of being stretched and full is intense but it isn’t painful. She can feel the old tendrils of fear trying to curl around her nonetheless, and she thinks he can also feel the stuttering tension trying to seize hold of her muscles.

“Are you—” he starts, and she presses two fingers to his lips, silencing him. And bless him, he holds so still even though he must want desperately to move, as she breathes deep and runs her hand through his hair and tells herself over and over, _It’s Max. You’re safe_ , until she can give him a tiny nod.

The first slow rock of his hips makes them both moan, and it feels _good_ , the way he moves inside her, and she’s so relieved that it feels good; she pulls him down on top of her and wraps her arms and legs around him and whispers, “More.” His thrusts get deeper and faster and his lips are on her throat where her pulse beats, and _ohh_ , she could get used to this.

“Make me come like this,” she breathes, nails digging into the back of his neck. He gets his hand between them and rubs with his thumb, matching each stroke with a thrust until she can’t tell the two sensations apart. When she comes she can feel herself clench around him, different from the grip of fear; this is deep and shuddery and good, so good she is whimpering against his shoulder, and it must be good for him too because his hand and his dick have fallen out of sync; he’s at that part where he can’t stop moving, and she always likes the moment right at the end when he has to surrender to his own pleasure, so she holds him close until she can feel him twitching and spilling inside her with a rough cry.

He doesn’t move for long time after, and she makes a discontented noise every time he shifts to roll off her. His hand is cradled around the back of her head and she just runs her fingers through his hair in slow strokes, over and over. She finds she does not at all mind him lying on top of her like this, sweaty and spent, between her legs that feel like rubber anyway.

She thinks with his help she could write over the old patterns, etch new memories into muscles that had only know terror and pain. She could burn the fear out with pleasure, she thinks, if she does it enough times.

 

She wakes from the nightmare to the sound of her own scream. It’s the worst one, the one she can never stop herself from screaming at, and she knows she should be awake but the hands from the nightmare are still clutching at her, holding her down, and instinct is howling _FIGHT_ , and she wrenches away and twists and her hand is on the knife under the mattress before she has time to think and she whips around and slashes out as hard as she can in the same moment she hears someone yell “Furiosa, stop!” and registers that that is Max’s voice.

_Max. It’s Max._

She freezes. 

And then a new wave of fear rolls over her, icy and choking, as her eyes adjust to the moonlight coming in the window and the scene comes into focus.

Max, sitting half-upright in bed, his fist curled around the blade of the knife in her hand. His fist, the only thing between the knife blade and his throat.

There is blood. She can smell it.

“Oh gods,” she chokes out. “Max?” 

She can see the whites of his eyes in the moonlight.

He swallows, his own emergency responses barely contained.

“Oh gods, did I—”

“M’okay.” His voice is strange, though, quiet and raw. He puts his free hand over hers and eases the knife away from his throat. And suddenly she is shaking, so hard that she’s shaking the knife embedded in his hand, she hears the hiss of his breath as he gingerly uncurls her fingers from around the handle.

She’s frozen, and a tiny part of her brain registers that he’s moving all his fingers as he cautiously slides the blade out of the wound; she hasn’t cut any tendons. But the rest of her brain is screaming.

“Oh gods—I could have—I almost—” She has to clap a hand over her mouth to keep the panicky gasps from coming out.

“S’not deep.” It’s bleeding, though, bleeding all over his other hand as he’s squeezing to apply pressure.

“Need you to light the lamp,” he says, but she can’t move, can’t do anything but stare at the blood dripping onto the sheet.

“Furiosa.” Calm, but insistent.

She stumbles to her feet, still gasping for breath, blood pounding in her ears. Her hands are shaking so badly she tries three times to light the wick without success and she screams _YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PANIC_ in her head before warm light fills the room.

He’s ripping a strip from the top of the sheet to use as a bandage, and she scrambles to help him even though her limbs feel numb. They have two good hands between them and together they wrap it tight enough to stop the bleeding.

“That knife’s been under the bed since the first night, hasn’t it?” He still has that strange quiet in his voice.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I am so sorry.”

Then he has to ask, “Are there any more?” And the fact that he doesn’t make it sound like an accusation just makes the sick weight in her stomach heavier. 

Neither one of them has to say that it had been her suggestion to remove all the weapons, and that she had been the one who hadn’t been able to trust.

“Just that one,” she says ( _I had to have just one, to fall asleep at all_ ) and she can’t even finish tying off the bandage end he’s holding in place before she has to put a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” And he’s pulling her into his arms and stroking her back as horrible, body-shaking sobs fight their way out of her, and she doesn’t understand why, because she doesn’t deserve it, and she is _so angry_ at herself for needing comfort when he’s the one who’s hurt, and underneath it all she is so afraid, that she has been hard and lethal for so long she doesn’t know how to be safe anymore.

“I’m so sorry—I could have—gods, what’s wrong with me, Max?” she chokes out, and she hasn’t sobbed like this since her mother died, but she can’t seem to make herself stop, and the stupid fool won’t stop holding her close and rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back.

“S’okay.” If he had been angry, or scared of her, that she could have understood, but she has no countermove prepared for kindness, so she just sobs against his shoulder until she’s exhausted.

Eventually he moves to put the knife, still bloody, on the ledge by the window, out of reach. He blows out the lamp and comes back with a cup of water for her to drink.

They’re both too keyed up to think about going back to sleep right away, but he sits up against the rock wall behind the bed and folds her back into his arms again and pulls the blanket over them.

“That won’t happen again,” she says after a while, and she’s grateful to hear that her voice is steady.

“I know.”

“If you…want to sleep somewhere else for the rest of the night—” _I wouldn’t blame you_ , she thinks.

“Here’s good.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Mm, well. You did try to shoot me in the head when we first met. Twice. So…could’ve been worse.”

That gets a tiny hiccup of a laugh out of her. “I don’t want to hurt you now, though.”

“Hard to stop sometimes.”

They are silent for a long while, but she can tell from the rhythm of his breathing that Max hasn’t fallen asleep.

“It was the worst dream," she says quietly. "About my mother. The way she died…it was awful.” She does not elaborate. “Before she died, she made me promise her that I would survive. And…I did. And I did a lot of bad things to do it. I hurt a lot of people. A lot of people.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way to do it.”

“Yeah. But you’re not supposed to like it.”

“But sometimes you do. Because you’re angry.”

Another pause.

“I used to think…when bad things would happen to me, that I was being punished, for not being able to save her.”

“Mm.”

“It’s hard to get used to good things.” Good things were so fragile in the Wasteland, and she couldn’t imagine it ever not being that way. “I get scared that…I’ll damage them.”

“Mm.” She feels him rest his temple against the top of her head. “Stronger than you might think, usually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me a while to get this chapter to where I wanted it, but I'm happy with the way it came out. Just a short epilogue still to go, and then we're done.


	5. Epilogue

Max wakes as the first morning light is coming in the window. He winces, cursing himself for falling asleep sitting up against the cold rock. His hand stings, but he hasn’t bled through the bandage. It will heal.

Furiosa is sleeping curled up against him, her forehead pressed into the curve of his neck. Her eyes are still swollen from crying last night, and it doesn’t make her any less disarming.

He remembers waking up another morning like this, exhausted and aching and dizzy from blood loss, looking down and feeling such a wave of relief to find her still warm and breathing against him, if not completely with ease, and having no idea what to do with the feeling.

He doesn’t know how long he can stay like this, when he will get restless, if he’ll have to leave and for how long. But for the first time in a very, very long time, he doesn’t want to. Or if he must, he wants to be able to come back.

It seems strange to think that the waves of terror at being welcomed and cared for and wanted would ever go away. And it seems even stranger that he would ever come to think of this maze of tunnels and rock and gears and scrap and impossible gardens as _home_.

But maybe, he thinks, home isn’t a place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this fic! Thank you for hopping on this smutty, feels-y Rig with me and for all your lovely comments.
> 
> This story is complete, but I have a few more ideas that might end up as PWPs or smutty one-shots in this timeline. These two are just too much fun to write about.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is going to be a short-ish multi-chapter fic, something like 3-5 chapters. It will only get smuttier. And feels-ier.
> 
> All uses of prickly pear/nopales are true to the best of my knowledge. Those fuckers are amazing. The internet tells me they were an invasive species in Australia that got so out of hand they had to be controlled by introducing a certain moth species, so I think they would definitely survive the apocalypse. And I just thought the idea of Max cradling a cactus and knowing a ridiculous amount about its properties was inherently funny.
> 
> And yes, the scene Furiosa is remembering is the one from [First Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4830554).
> 
> Come say hi on [my blog](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com).


End file.
